


Black of Hair

by prodigy



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5319257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/pseuds/prodigy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life and times of Joffrey Baratheon, King Robert's trueborn son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black of Hair

**Author's Note:**

> Written for yunie1281 in got_exchange.

Sometimes, in the thin red light of morning, she went to see the boy. No one could say otherwise. Robert, for once, gave her peace: slumbering on sodden in their marriage bed, uninterested in a woman still pained and distended from childbirth. She would pull on a white robe and go from the chamber without disturbing any of her handmaids--she didn't want their company at a time like this--and make her way in the half-dark to the nursery, where the wet-nurse slept in her chair and the boy in his crib. At Cersei's appearance in the doorway the woman would usually start awake, and her privacy with her son was spoiled; or boy would be bawling and nurse awake in the first place. These tableaus rarely went the correct way. But once or twice in Joffrey's infancy, Cersei did steal into his nursery and curl her fingers over the white wooden crib and look down at her sleeping son. It was an impulse that she had to satisfy. In the fullness of the day she avoided the place: it smelled of milk and echoed with the boy's screams.

He didn't recognize her when he was awake. "Sons are meant to recognize their mothers," she murmured half under her breath when she rocked him in her arms in her daytime chambers; but the nurse heard her and said something conciliatory, and she rolled her eyes openly at the woman. "It was a jest," she said, and it half was: "I know he knows who I am. He squalled before he was out of me. He knew enough of a place," she bounced Joffrey in her arms, "where he didn't want to be."

The boy stopped crying long enough to hiccup. It brought with it a sprig of amusement, for her: Jaime was always hiccuping as a child. Maybe she was too. She didn't quite remember.

Cersei held him on her hip. The wet-nurse had turned away for a rag to clean up some of his spittle; with her distracted, it was she and the boy alone again for a moment. She had never thought about that before: when she was pregnant, she'd had plenty of time to talk to the child, to wish him to be born hardy and strong. He was. Now every word of the Queen's to the Prince was overheard. He needed taking care of.

He angled his head to take a deep breath for another shriek. "Don't scream," Cersei told the boy in hush-a-bye tones. "Men don't scream. Not even with swords through their bellies. Your father has never screamed once in his life."

She didn't believe it. Robert was always making noise. Neither did Joffrey--he opened his mouth and let out an ugly, feline wail, and Cersei held her son out to the nurse again to take.

* * *

She marveled at her son's hair. He had a full, beautiful head of it by his fifth month alive. It grew glossy and unnatural, at a rate that almost repulsed her. All of him did. He sucked his nurse dry and it all went to fleshing him out; this charmed Jaime, which was also unnatural. Robert had no interest in children before they could talk: Jaime had an easy way with babies, an easier one than Cersei did. Possibly this was because he could absent his dignity, make all manner of horrendous faces, refer to himself as _Uncle Jaime_ without a speck of regret; what a father he would have made, Cersei thought as he hoisted Joffrey up under both arms and set the colicky child to a rare fit of giggles.

"He looks like Renly," said Jaime through a broad, nightmarish smile in Joffrey's direction.

Cersei thought of the little Lord of Storm's End. "He's only a baby. He'll look like Robert soon enough," she said with a strange feeling of defense.

"Oh, don't damn him to that. I say Renly." Jaime tweaked little Joffrey's nose; Joffrey snickered. He would have cried if she'd done that, Cersei thought. "Better than Stannis. You're not like Uncle Stannis, are you?" he addressed this to Joffrey in an affected voice. "No. No, you're certainly not. See, he says so."

Jaime had a flip, fraternal way with the child, but he never seemed to regret handing him back to Cersei--"And why should he?" she said later to Joffrey, feeding him a spoonful of fruit mashed into gruel. "Men are cats. They don't care for other toms' litters." But no, that was from Tywin: something Father had said a decade before about bastards, arbitrating a case. It bothered her when Father found his recursive way into her mind, inhabiting places she thought belonged to her.

Or you could be like him, she thought grimly of Joffrey. Or you could be like me.

Robert only came to hold Joffrey when he wasn't crying: but he had a gift for making him cry. Cersei would watch with perverse anticipation as he swept the boy up, said something in his echoing cavernous voice, and handled him roughly; and when he cried Robert would say something like, _there, there, you'll be a man someday_ , and Cersei would hold out her dutiful arms for him.

* * *

Joffrey did look like Renly. Or Jaime, she realized with some pain--Jaime with stronger bones in the face and an abundance of grease-black hair. But she never remembered Jaime quarrelsome. Jaime smiling, yes--Jaime uncertain, Jaime trailing after her with his hand interlocked with hers. But not quarrelsome, not like Joffrey. There the resemblance ceased.

He met his other two uncles in his second year of life. Cersei laced him tight into a child's doublet while he made ugly faces of discomfort and presented him to Stannis and Renly with her head held high. Little Renly laughed and tried to wend his hand free of his brother's, and failed, while Stannis bowed to Cersei and the child prince with an unreadable expression. The brothers of a king, Cersei thought, lived in nothing but disappointment. The brothers of a king were nothing but danger to a prince. She hefted Joffrey up onto her hip and let them look at him: the ruddy vitality in his face and fingers, his wide green eyes blinking infant curiosity at the two.

Look, she wanted to say. Look at what you will never have. For a moment Cersei felt in golden, shining accord with the child in her arms.

Renly reached out; he splayed the fingers of his free hand against Joffrey's and beamed. Joffrey balled his hand up into a fist and struck him. Renly--apparently unused to this manner of reaction--blinked and failed to evade a second blow until Stannis yanked him out of the way of a third. " _Joffrey_ ," Cersei hissed, but Joffrey burbled and tried to hit Renly again.

"Renly. It's only a babe," Stannis said with a shake of his head.

Cersei pinched Joffrey on one fat arm. Joffrey started to cry. "Hush," Cersei said, and irritation churned up in her all at once; "There, there, hush."

"He doesn't like me very much," said Renly.

He doesn't like much, Cersei wanted to say. Instead she said: "He doesn't like to be touched by strangers," primly, and held him up. In front of her, Stannis cleared his throat, and Cersei hated him; Renly waved at Joffrey again and Cersei hated him, too. Joffrey continued to cry. Cersei pinched him again.

Joffrey didn't like much, but he liked his own voice. Joffrey loved to wail, and when he grew out of wailing, he hollered. Of young Jaime, Cersei couldn't think of anything that reminded her less: if anything, she had the traitorous thought, it was Tyrion he called to mind, Tyrion who never knew how to stop crying. But as it turned out, little Joffrey's disagreement with the world was much more compelling, and not limited to Renly Baratheon. He knocked food he disliked to the ground with one chubby little hand; he slapped his nurses hard enough to hurt them.

"Slap him back," Cersei told one woman, irritable. "He'll learn better."

Joffrey Baratheon's first word was _Mama_ : screamed at the top of his lungs in the middle of a tantrum. "He's only making sounds," said Cersei when this was reported to her. "He doesn't know what he's saying." She went to him anyway and took him up and muttered a lullabye.

* * *

But he wasn't like Tyrion, either. Tyrion had always failed to thrive, like some kind of wretched little hothouse flower; Joffrey flourished, like a weed. She fussed over what he was fed, even while she was pregnant again: this time with Jaime's, she was almost certain, and the thought filled her up with warmth. Jaime reacted with less elation: "Well, this one'll be yellow-haired," he said philosophically. "And terribly handsome. Or beautiful."

"Handsome," Cersei corrected him, and laid her hand across her belly as if she was certain she was carrying a boy. The truth was she fantasized about a girl: a yellow-haired, leonine girl fashioned in her image. The idea of bearing a second son to Robert's son was almost unbearable.

What Joffrey was fed made little difference, however, and he grew. Cersei visited him less in the nursery now; she was too preoccupied feeding and talking to the new baby growing in her, letting Jaime rest his hand on her belly and pull his fingers through her hair. When she went to see Joffrey he was always ruining things--tablecloths, toys. "There's no use in giving the boy anything," Robert once remarked, and Cersei could no longer distinguish the dismay in his voice from the mingled pride.

Joffrey did not like to sleep. When he was put to bed he threatened and cajoled his nursemaids in equal measure. To hear them tell it, it always came back to the same. "Mama," he would say. "I want Mama."

"He can't always be getting what he wants," said Cersei when they came to report this to her.

Joffrey was four years of age when Cersei pushed out a sister. Robert dubbed the girl Myrcella and Cersei peered down into Myrcella's eyes: Jaime's eyes, Cersei's eyes.

Robert came with Joffrey to the birthing chamber. It was peculiar to see the two of them together, Cersei thought through the net of her own pain and fatigue--an unfamiliar sight. Robert hefted Joffrey up: "Your little sister," he said.

"I don't want one," said Joffrey with shocking plainness. When the midwife shifted in discomfort he raised his voice again and said, "I don't _want_ one. _Mama_."

"Lad--" Robert made as if to shake him.

"Oh, leave him be," snapped Cersei, sinking back. "Leave him be and take him away. I don't know why you thought he should come here."

"Mama--"

At that moment Myrcella took in another lungful of air and started to cry herself. Joffrey screwed up his face at her, just as Robert swept him up and away.

* * *

Myrcella bloomed too, to Cersei's relief, in the face of all her fears about monstrous offspring and horses bred too close. She barely cried. She looked out at the world through wide green eyes: not unlike her older brother, on the face of it, but she seldom scrunched them up to wail. Cersei bounced her in her arms and counted her fingers and toes, sang to her, drew Jaime aside to dandle her too when they had a moment alone. "She looks like you," she said to him and fingered his jawline, the minute turns of his face where they differed.

"She looks like _you_ ," he laughed, not taking her seriously, and turned to kiss her.

That year Cersei was pregnant again. This one was a rougher birth, a stout boy she called Tommen. Tommen, she thought, was Jaime's too. He looked it. But he was always taking ill and spurning all manner of food. Already he was only his sister's shadow.

They grew. Not like Joffrey. Cersei had turned her back on him a moment--a year, two years--and he was bigger every day.

Robert took a passing interest in the younger children, particularly Myrcella whom he swept giggling up onto his hip like an affectionate uncle, but it was the older boy he was starting to notice. Joffrey was old enough for sport, or at least for tales of sport, and Robert gave him a wooden sword and a wooden bow and told him stories of hunting. "You'll give him notions," Cersei complained.

"What notions?" Robert questioned, with more dryness than irritation. "Gods forbid."

"He's only a boy," said Cersei and wondered if Robert thought she was being protective. Maybe she was, in some measure, but that wasn't the whole of it. It made her uneasy to think of her son with a toy sword in his hands, a real sword, a warhammer; there was a seed in the boy that she didn't care to see sprout, not as long as she could stay it. She doubted that would be very long.

And sure enough: "I want to join Father's hunting party," declared seven-year-old Joffrey Baratheon one day.

Cersei did not waver over her embroidery. The needle darted up and over the hoop. "No," she said without looking up. Tommen was seated in her lap. He'd grown fat already, chubbier than Joffrey at his age, and Cersei frowned over his nurses. Every so often he batted at Cersei's work, but there was no fire in it and she held it away from him with ease. "When you're older."

Myrcella was seated on the ground in a ring of her blocks. Joffrey swept past her and, in doing so, sent a careless kick towards the ring, scattering the blocks across the floor like salt. Myrcella cried out in dismay. "Joffrey," Cersei snapped, but Joffrey was already on his way out of the room, a little storm moving over the water.

He halted in the doorway. His dark eyebrows gave him a ill-tempered cast that he didn't need. "I'm going to join Father's hunting party, Mother," he said. "I'm going to ask him and he's going to let me."

"Joffrey, come back here and pick up your sister's blocks." Cersei placed her embroidery on the bench next to her, moved Tommen off her lap. Joffrey just shot her a long, flinty look and turned and slammed the door behind him--"Joffrey!" she shouted, but he was gone, and Tommen was crying.

Robert didn't let him. Cersei heard Joffrey's quarrel with his father from across the hall. You could always hear Robert quarreling with someone. She imagined Robert cuffing him and sending him away.

They found Myrcella the next day at the bottom of the stairs, her ankle twisted under her and half her body bruised from the tumble. She didn't cry out; she whimpered through gritted teeth until Meryn Trant happened upon her. A bump had risen on her head from tugging on her hair. Some of it had come out. Into her arm were bruised small fingerprints.

* * *

They talked of fostering him. Cersei favored the idea: moreover, she favored fostering him with his grandfather. Tywin would be a civilizing influence--Tywin, in truth, would impose the discipline the boy needed and no one here seemed armed to give him. But she could hardly say that to Robert, so she tried to placate him with, "My father will be kind to Joffrey. He's family. We'll see him often."

"That would defeat the purpose," Robert snapped. He raised his hands up in agitation, his shoulders flexed, and Cersei was reminded of their son again and felt a pulse of loathing. 

"We aren't sending him to Eddard Stark," said Cersei, as if she was afraid of the North's harshness. The true course of her thoughts was: Eddard Stark will be useless. The North is too far away to retain the boy's loyalty. Someone ought to keep an eye on him.

Robert sank his teeth into his lower lip, flared his nostrils. He was gaining weight, Cersei observed again with contempt. Beauty was all he had and he was throwing it all to waste. "I don't know what you would have me do," he said.

In the end Robert beat him. Cersei watched him with her hands behind her back as he selected a switch--not too thin, by her measure, nothing that would kill him either--and then they had the boy dragged in and Robert laid into him with a fury Cersei had only ever seen directed at her. Joffrey screamed when Robert hit him, but Cersei realized with distant surprise, he didn't weep: not with his baleful green eyes fixed on Cersei the entire time, not even when Robert drew blood.

When Robert was finished, he dropped Joffrey, who fell to the ground in a tumble. "See to your son," he told Cersei.

Cersei gathered him up and led him, roughly, to the nursery to tend to his wounds. "Shh," she said to him. "Don't cry."

"I'm not crying," mumbled Joffrey, whitefaced.

"If you ever do anything like that again," said Cersei, "Father will kill you. Do you understand?"

She expected _No he won't_ or something of the like. Instead Joffrey just laid his head back against the wall and repeated, "I'm not _crying_."

In the end she hired tutors and playmates: tutors with the authority to punish him and playmates whose fathers wouldn't raise a fuss. Myrcella healed clean, none worse for the wear, and Tommen fattened and grew. Joffrey knocked his playmates about and vexed his tutors to no end, and most of all demanded audiences with Robert--and Cersei knew Robert turned him away. He never applied for an audience with Cersei. He merely turned up, like he was entitled to it, daring her to tell him otherwise: and only went away once she did, staring at her like a dog denied his supper.

* * *

For Myrcella's seventh name day Cersei gave her the Hound. Myrcella, brave Myrcella--even Myrcella stepped back once or twice at the sight of Sandor Clegane's face. He stood motionless while Cersei introduced them, and later Robert complained, "Is that a fitting sight for a little girl's eyes?" Even Jaime raised the same question, albeit with just a quirk of his eyebrows and a glance in Myrcella's direction and then Cersei's. Cersei had the same answer for them both. The Hound was a gift from her father and he would protect Myrcella. There was no need to say from whom.

Joffrey took a disliking. "It's a beast," he said, eleven and tall. "I don't see why we allow a beast to eat at the table."

Clegane treated the crown prince with deference and was instructed only to stop him if he was on the verge of doing violence, so Cersei wondered if Joffrey would take advantage of that. But Joffrey had lost all interest in Sandor Clegane when he realized that he was a tame beast. Perhaps in something wild he would have found something to conquer. Instead he found boredom and the mild insult that Clegane was allowed to share his company at all: or rather, that _it_ was allowed. (Myrcella was too kind to Clegane, for her part: Cersei caught her embroidering a doll for him and scolded her and took it away.)

"What's the matter with its face?" Joffrey asked Cersei once on a picnic on the green grounds while Robert readied his party for a hunt. His eyes tracked his father with an undeniable hunger; Robert still ignored him, but Cersei thought it wasn't Robert he yearned for. The men were checking their weapons, the dogs gathering and barking. Of the men only half of the Kingsguard and Clegane hung back to ring the queen's party.

Cersei had given up on _it_. "An accident when he was a boy," she said. "With a brazier."

Joffrey snorted and Cersei knew he had the same thought that she did. Her son wasn't always a brute; he had the occasional flash of sharpness that disturbed her even more, from such a creature of malice. A moment later he verbalized it: "An accident?"

"Yes," she said. "Don't go questioning things everyone already knows. No one likes it if you do that. You should know that much." Another echo of Tywin--but Tywin wouldn't have phrased it for a child's benefit, Tywin never did. He expected anyone to keep pace with his strides, and considered it the least of his problems if they fell behind. At least Cersei did more than that.

"No one likes it if I do anything," said Joffrey. There was a sulk in his voice, but less rancor than usual. He eyed his mother with consideration.

Cersei shrugged her hair off her shoulders. "Then you should consider doing something that anyone would like," she said.

The truth was that hardly anyone did like him. When he wasn't cruel and bellicose he was moody and apart--impatient and clumsy with his studies, awkward and bullying with other children, at-home only with the horses and hounds. He had an easy way with a sword, too. Of course he did. But the gods had hewn him so crude and awkward in the mind that she almost pitied him, save for the way the ermine sat on his pretty shoulders. At times it occurred to her she knew what it felt like to have the anger seep up through her no matter what she did. Instead of conferring sympathy, it only stirred the emotion with more violence. You will be King, she wondered of Joffrey; what do you have to be angry about?

Myrcella pointed out a butterfly to Tommen. Cersei's gaze flitted in their direction, at which point she saw Joffrey move towards the men. "Don't you think of it," she said in a low voice and he settled again. "Settle down, Joffrey. Is anything enough for you?"

Joffrey stilled, surly, and crossed his legs on the cloth over the grass. His eyes still followed the hunters.

He broke a whipping boy's arm in the winter, when Clegane was out of the room with Myrcella making snow horses in the courtyard. Robert swore and left a bruise along the bone of Cersei's cheek when she pointed out that she had nothing to do with it.

She went on serenely as if nothing had happened. Eventually Robert cooled. That was one difference between him and Joffrey. "We should have him betrothed," she said. "It should motivate him to act more of a man."

"A girl?" Robert gave a coarse laugh. "The last thing I'd put in his hands. Gods."

"He wouldn't hurt a highborn woman," she said with complete disingenuity. "He knows better."

She met her son in the hallway on her way back to her own chambers. The other difference between Robert and Joffrey, Cersei thought, was that Robert never noticed anything. Joffrey blocked her way with his shoulders and raised his hand, immediately, to touch the dark spot on her cheek. Cersei flinched and opened her mouth to reproach him, but Joffrey spoke first. "Father's work?" he said.

Cersei said nothing. She stared at her son. His face was downcast and furrowed, as usual, and he had a stormy knot working its way out from between his eyebrows. He would be old when he was young, Cersei thought, if he kept up like this.

"I would have knocked him down," said Joffrey.

A laugh forced its way out of Cersei, at the idea of her raising a successful hand to Robert Baratheon. Joffrey clarified, " _I_ would have knocked him down. I'll be his size soon enough."

Joffrey would never be Robert's size, Cersei thought. He had too much of Jaime's blood. Her blood. But he would come close.

Cersei knocked his hand away. "You are an unbelievably foolish boy," she said. "Go back to bed."

* * *

They rode north on Joffrey's thirteenth name day. He was near Cersei's height now. With them rode Tyrion and Jon Arryn, old and ailing. Cersei misliked the North, as she misliked the Starks. This came as no surprise to her, however, and she rode with her lips pursed against the cold and her chin high. Tyrion wanted to ride with Tommen and Myrcella, which came as no surprise to her either; Tyrion was always craving access to things outside of his grasp. "I haven't seen them in quite some time," he cajoled with a sweet smile on his ugly face. "I've got sweets for them. Not too many." She barred him from it and sent him to keep company with Joffrey instead, in the front of the train near Robert. Let him stomach the company of his nephew. Surely there was no further harm to be done there.

She braided Myrcella's hair while they rode in the wheelhouse together. Tommen complained of the cold and Cersei shushed him and bundled him up further. Eventually she came to wondering what Tyrion had to say to Joffrey.

Tyrion and Joffrey had little in common, Cersei knew. They'd both made intolerable children, but Tyrion was bookish and conniving, given to ingratiation--Joffrey was all force and temper, and had always been. Still she twisted the hem of her cloak between her fingers and wondered if she regretted her decision.

At camp they dismounted and Joffrey rode back to see his mother. Cersei caught a glimpse of Tyrion's twisted form from the back. "I trust you've had a comfortable ride, Mother," said Joffrey. As always, there was more than a trace of sarcasm in the pleasantry.

"I take it the cold isn't blistering you?" Cersei reached up to pat Joffrey's hair down by habit.

"It's fine."

She couldn't resist. "Had an enlightening chat with Uncle Tyrion?"

Joffrey rolled his eyes so hard that it had to hurt and turned away. "By your leave, Mother," he said and awaited dismissal.

There was no getting anything out of Joffrey. He didn't gossip: he balled up all his experiences inside of himself in a rotten little cache and they festered, but he didn't gossip. She went to Tyrion instead. She used to always mark the number of times she willingly associated with Tyrion, out of novelty, but the truth was it happened much too often when he visited to be worth the distinction. Maybe this was what getting old felt like. She shook off the thought and sat down next to her brother.

She didn't have to ask him. That was Tyrion. "You have yourself a charming son," he remarked.

"No one asked for your opinion, Tyrion." Cersei gathered her cloak about herself.

"Of course they didn't. Of course." Tyrion was unbothered, untouchable up on his damned little cloud. "He's a bit young to be riding with the men. Did it perhaps occur to you to let him spend a bit more time with his mother?"

"He's riding north for his betrothal," Cersei shot back. "He's old enough to ride with his father."

Tyrion opened and closed one eye, looked up, shrugged. "If you say so," he said.

They sat in silence for a while. Cersei wondered if Jaime would come looking for them.

"Are you going to foster him with Stark?" Tyrion asked.

"So many questions," murmured Cersei.

"I confess it." Tyrion smiled. "Gods help the Stark girl. Whichever one it is."

The jab should have angered her. In fact Cersei was tired, and looking at the set of her brother's shoulders, in spite of his smile, he was tired too. Treating with Joffrey could do that to a man. She'd wanted to send him to Tywin, she remembered, and then Tyrion could have all his damned time to sort out how to deal with the boy. She was still aggrieved with curiosity, however, but knew she couldn't ask; the reverse of never needing to ask Tyrion to talk was that he never volunteered anything that he hadn't at the outset. Such a clever, clever little boy. For once she wondered what Joffrey made of _him_ , but supposed it couldn't be anything good. Joffrey hated Myrcella. He wanted to crush anything cleverer than himself.

When they came to Winterfell, Ned Stark was older than Cersei remembered, in fact older than her mind had adjusted him to be. This satisfied her in some obscure way, Robert's precious Ned an aging strip of a man. His children were lined up for perusal in the great hall and Cersei immediately picked out the girl in question. A pretty, watery Tully close to Joffrey's age.

"You look unimpressed," Jaime commented.

It could have come out of Tyrion's mouth. The thought soured her and Cersei turned her head to ignore him. He had misidentified her, in any case. What she wanted to say was: Ned Stark will never let this girl marry Joffrey.

"I should be with Robert," she said. She got up to make good on this, and as she did Jaime let his fingers brush hers. She swallowed down the unwanted spark, the ember of fear too, and made her way from him.

For supper they seated Joffrey at Cersei's left hand, and at Sansa Stark's right. So ran the course of matchmaking. Robert was immersed in conversation with Stark and Arryn; Cersei watched Joffrey set to his food with a sullen determination. He didn't look at the Stark girl until he was finished. The Stark girl, studious, didn't look at him either. Cersei spied the other one, the little long-faced sister, stealing glances in Joffrey's direction. Perhaps she'd never seen a boy so handsome. Or so rude. Certainly the Greyjoy lad made no true rival of himself in either regard.

Still Sansa Stark kept her eyes downcast until Joffrey finally addressed her. Cersei pretended an interest in Robert's conversation while Joffrey stared openly at his betrothed-to-be and said: "Why are you still eating?"

Sansa tried to pick out an appropriate piece of conversation, and settled on, "I'm still hungry, my lord."

"No, you aren't. I can tell that you aren't." Joffrey frowned as Sansa shrank visibly from his displeasure. "You should give it to your direwolf."

"I'm not to feed Lady scraps from the table," said Sansa, "my lord. According to Mother--"

"If _I_ had charge of your direwolf--" Joffrey made jaws of his fingers. "She would bite the fingers off of anyone who dared to deprive her. Mother or no." He snapped them together and looked up at Cersei; Cersei felt her stomach churn, in spite of all her scorn, and she looked back at Robert. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sansa Stark drop her hands into her lap, struck silent.

They did not forge the betrothal before they left. Stark claimed that his daughter was too young. He made mention of no misgivings, but Cersei thought of the quavering girl with a tendril of unsurprised irritation. Most of it was turned on her son, though, and in the wheelhouse on the way back she slapped him: "You frightened the girl," she said. "That way won't serve you with women."

"I'm going to be king," Joffrey said with a disdainful cast. "It doesn't matter what way I have with women. They'll have me all the same."

Disgusted, Cersei slapped him again. But already he was given to turning and taking it in silence, while Tommen cried behind them. Tommen cried at any altercation.

"Don't fret, Mother," said Joffrey at the bottom of his voice. "I wouldn't set a wolf on your hands."

He was near Cersei's height. She gathered Tommen up into her lap, rocking him along with the rhythm of the wagon, while Joffrey stared at the wall.

"Well, young love is always a trial," said Tyrion when they made camp and Cersei all but struck him too. Over Tyrion's shoulder Joffrey had bounded up to bother Robert again about riding, or hunting, or something of the sort.

* * *

By the time Joffrey was sixteen, he had learned a few fragments of his manners. By the time he was seventeen, Sansa Stark was betrothed to him properly and traveled to King's Landing with her sister to live at court until their wedding. The girl was pale with exhaustion when she arrived, and Cersei composed in Baratheon yellow and unimpressed. Her mind was traveling elsewhere, in any case, thinking of Myrcella's prospects. If Robert Arryn lived to adulthood, Cersei thought, he would make a worthless man. Perhaps Mace Tyrell's youngest would suit.

Sansa took ill as soon as she was installed in her rooms at court. Instead of going to her over it, Cersei went to Joffrey. "I am going to teach you about women," she told him when she sat him down--a trial by itself, his attention now rarely captured by anything that didn't have a point or run away from the hunt. "Listen."

Joffrey coughed. It took Cersei a moment to realize it was meant to be a mocking laugh. "I know about women, Mother," he said.

"You know about very little, Joffrey."

This time the laugh was more successful. Sorely, it reminded her of Jaime--a strange place for Jaime, the bitter edge. "I know about women," he said again. She was jolted into revulsion and thought of young Robert: of all the time Joffrey spent outside of her knowledge. "But go on. What is it you wish to teach me, Mother?"

Cersei regretted that he was too old to pinch. "The Starks are our closest allies and your father's friends," she said, "and to anger them is not only to anger your father. It's spoiling the realm that you're going to inherit."

"I see," said Joffrey, and stood to go.

She caught his sleeve. His expression shuttered like a window. "You think I'm going to be cruel to Lady Stark," he said. She said nothing; he tugged his arm away with unsurprising strength. "I don't see why I should. She'll be my lady wife. She seems like a woman who'd mind her lord husband."

So did I, thought Cersei: so was I. In a flurry she changed her mind about his age. She stood and hit him, across the face, like he was ten again and breaking his playmates' arms. "You will spoil everything that I've worked for," she said. "And for what? Your own amusement? You have it all wrong with kingship. The day you inherit is the day your father's name _stops_ shielding you. You wretched boy." I fear the day your father dies, she almost added, but didn't because it made her feel pathetic--because it had always, before now, been something she prayed for.

"Sometimes I think," said Joffrey, "that Tommen is your only son." When she recoiled he shook his head. "Maybe I'll spit him and make a roast when I'm king," he said. "Maybe I'll borrow Lady Stark out to the Hound. Is that what you want to hear, Mother?"

He was married to Sansa in the spring. The bride was young and flushed and Northern in ash-grey embroidered with rose. Joffrey was a configuration in black, a silhouette from a song. Cersei witnessed their wedding and their bedding without passion, and wondered if Sansa Stark would be tear-streaked in the morning. But she saw no red rims around the Stark girl's eyes the following day and, in a hot moment, resented her; she saw Sansa lean in more readily to listen to her husband than she had before. Just wait, Cersei thought in Sansa's direction; just wait. It was all a woman had to do, and it would all be the same.

* * *

It came two years from then. She had always known, in the back of her throat, that it would come: that a time would come when the Seven would abandon her. She had always thought it would come from Jon Arryn. Jon Arryn was dead now, an old man's painful death in his wife's arms in the Eyrie. She almost thought that the danger was past.

She did not think that it would come from Stannis. She'd no sense of his imagination. But it did: before the king, in front of the Small Council and the court, the Master of Ships stood and made his accusation.

When she imagined this, she always imagined that Robert would wring her neck right away, in front of everyone. So had Jaime, it seemed, because he moved towards her when Stannis began to speak. But Robert reddened deeper and deeper when Stannis spoke, and when he finally replied it was to order Stannis to leave--to leave or face the king's justice for his slander against his wife and children. Stannis refused; Cersei wondered, if she burst into tears, whether Robert would be driven to have his brother killed right in front of them. That would protect her, she thought with a grim, hazy sort of practicality. One hardly executed one's brother and then admitted that he was right.

He did not kill Stannis. It was a disappointing scene: Robert puffing breath through his teeth, Stannis straight-backed and solemn--Baelish and Renly somewhere behind them wearing their own particular masks of surprise. Eventually Robert dismissed the entire court and stormed out, not looking at anyone, not looking at Cersei.

It came. She had always known that it would. As soon as she was permitted she went to find Tommen and Myrcella and to make preparations. Jaime could not go with them: she had already decided that years ago, and grieved it in advance, and mourned. Now she only had to find Clegane and Myrcella before their father did, before the doubt already seeping into his mind.

It was a cold process. Cersei took Tommen from his bedroom and wondered, with a chill kind of remove, if she would ever kill Stannis Baratheon. Right now, she felt atop a peak; right now, contrary to reason, everything felt possible.

She encountered Sansa first. Sansa blanched and froze; Cersei wondered if she should kill her, too, and decided it would leave too much suspicion in her wake. It was too easy to imagine killing her daughter-in-law, who stood there pulling at her necklaces like she was running out of air. Soon Cersei realized why Sansa had stilled, however.

Joffrey put his hand out. "Sansa," he dismissed her. "Run along now."

Tommen squirmed. Joffrey had his sword in his other hand--or one of, Cersei supposed, as if he limited himself to just one. He was ruddy too, a color that was a pale companion to his father's. He and Sansa were blocking Cersei's way--backwards was the dead end of the nursery, forward the point of his blade.

It did not occur to Cersei to reason with Joffrey. Fright would not make a fool of her. She wrapped her arms around Tommen. Perhaps Jaime would hear her if she screamed. Perhaps others would, too.

Sansa, finally, ran, half-tripping over her skirts as she went. Half-clever girl that she was. Joffrey took a step forward; Cersei stepped back.

Tommen was squirming too much, and he was too big: in a panic, Cersei thought he would run to Joffrey, but instead he dashed behind her and buried his face in her dress. Joffrey watched him. "It's true, isn't it?" he said. "About you and Uncle Jaime and Myrcella and Tommen. Father won't believe it, but it's true."

He was thick with emotion. Cersei could guess which. She said nothing, tried to calculate again the range of her own scream--Joffrey went on, "Don't shriek. I'll kill you if you shriek."

Cersei was silent. Joffrey paused, maybe evaluating the efficacy of a threat he planned to carry out either way, and then furrowed his brow.

"You should pray, Mother," he said.

"Joffrey--" It was the first word she'd spoken to him.

"You ought to pray." Maybe the Hound would find his way out with Myrcella. It was his damned duty, Cersei thought. Maybe they would run away.

Cersei held her hands up to Joffrey again. "Joffrey," she tried again. "You can't believe Lord Stannis's lies."

"Uncle Stannis never lies," said Joffrey, the pitch of his voice rising. "He's only wrong. But he's not wrong, is he?"

She said nothing.

"You should pray," he said again.

She looked at him instead. He was chiseled half in Robert's image, half in Jaime's: dressed like a rich hunter, all in sable and green, unarmored, young and beautiful but for his face which was contorted into age and ugliness. The dying were meant to think of their own lives, and of those they loved, but Cersei thought of his--his fat squalling face. The bruises under Myrcella's dress. The broken arm, the frightened whipping boys. His vicious words in the North. Robert's image, Robert's blood, Robert's black, black hair. She willed herself to banish it, but it wouldn't go away. She didn't want to go to her grave thinking of Joffrey Baratheon, she told herself: did she not?

She realized she was weeping. Not very: tears were rolling down her cheeks and she had to blink them away, that was all. She opened her mouth to scream.

She heard the sound of sniffling. Tommen, of course, trying to hide from what was happening to them. It was louder than that. Joffrey was weeping too, more wholly: with redness in his eyes and thick wetness in his throat. Of course he was. Joffrey always cried.

Cersei stepped forward and pushed the sword away with one hand. She put her arms around Joffrey and he sobbed into her shoulder, while she stared over his, far away, and felt herself coming down hard from the peak, crashing down into the floor in King's Landing where she stood trapped with her children.

Joffrey pushed her away to arm's-length, and Cersei thought he was going to say something: a plea, maybe. It never made it out of his mouth. He shoved her harder and she stumbled into Tommen; then, understanding what had just transpired, she took Tommen's hand and scooped up her skirts and fled. She ran for the gardens. Myrcella and Clegane always went to the gardens at this time, to look at the flowers. She would find them if she hurried. She knew that she would. Knowing this, she put all else out of mind.


End file.
